iPhone 14 Pro-48 MP Cam; Oracle Picks up Cerner; Microsoft Buys Xander from AT&T; EV Challenge- Building Enough Chargers

Apple is reportedly joining the high megapixel club with their iPhone cameras. Samsung has featured 48 and even over 100 MP cams for a few years now. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, cited in macrumors.com, looks for Apple to add a 48 MP lens to the top iPhone 14 Pro models this coming fall. That will be followed by a so-called periscope lens in 2023. the 48 MP lens will shoot at that output, except in low light conditions, when they will use ‘pixel binning’ to drop back to 12 MP to preserve quality. the periscope lens, which has been out several years on some competing phones like one from Huawei, utilizes folded camera optics to dramatically increase optical zoom…getting up to 10x. iPhone 13 models only have a 3x optical zoom. You can get to 10 with the electronic zoom, but the pics are not nearly as clear, and if you are shooting video, it tends to ‘smear.’ 

Oracle has picked up electronic health records company Cerner in a $28.3 billion deal. According to techcrunch.com, this will help Oracle to move into the healthcare vertical market in a major way, and should bulk up their cloud infrastructure business. The deal is being reported as the biggest acquisition in Oracle history. Microsoft had already dived into this area earlier this year, when it bought Nuance Communications. 

Microsoft is bulking up in the ad space area, snapping up Xandr ad marketplace from AT&T for an undisclosed price (which usually means someone is paying a bundle!) Zdnet.com says Xander is a ‘data-enabled technology platform powering a global marketplace for premium advertising.’ Expect Microsoft to continue to operate its own Microsoft Audience Network, PromoteIQ, and Microsoft Customer Experience platforms as they work to hoover up more and more ad dollars. In their 1st quarter earnings report, MS said ad revenue, minus acquisition costs, was up 40% over the prior year’s quarter.

We’ve reported on the uptake in sales of new EVs like the Hummer and the Mustang e. It appears that EVs are increasing fairly rapidly as a percentage of vehicle sales. Now comes the next challenge…enough charging stations to handle all of them. Theverge.com notes that there was a blast of cash in the Build Back Better bill that is now on hold to put in a substantial number of them. There are more and more stations along the interstates, but in towns, cities, and neighborhoods…not so much. As we reported yesterday, Waze is now showing charging stations on their mapping app….but a quick check of it shows precious few chargers in EV friendly San Francisco…so figure other less progressive cities and towns will really be short. Right now, there are 46,000 public charging stations in the country. Most analysts say we will need at least 100,000 by 2030!